This invention relates to word puzzles and to games based on the word puzzles in which the player attempts to identify one or more concealed words.
Word puzzles have long fascinated the public, as is evidenced by the great variety of crossword puzzles, cryptograms, acrostics, anagram, and the like.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,678,201 to Riviera describes a puzzle of the crossword puzzle type in which a word-defining matrix is premarked with symbols. The symbols consist of either letters which can be converted into other letters, or partial letters which can be converted into two or more other letters. In essence, the Rivera puzzle consists essentially of a standard crossword puzzle in which clues to the correct answers are given by means of the symbols incorporated into the crossword puzzle spaces.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,860,653 to Jacobs relates basically to anagram-type games, and provides an extensive discussion of this type of game and the problems associated with adapting the game of anagram for the television viewer and/or the computer user. The Jacobs"" patent, however, is more concerned with the manner of delivery of the game for these particular media, and does not really offer a new type of game.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,338,043 to Rehm, provides an excellent description of puzzles of the cryptogram type. Rehm developed a new type of cryptographic puzzle that is somewhat faster and simpler than the usual cryptogram and provides clues and decoding options involving logical xe2x80x9cguessingxe2x80x9d which can lead to the solution with minimal corrections.
As can be seen from the foregoing, the several patents do not define so much new games as much as they define modifications of existing games for the purposes of simplifying them for the solver, or for presentation to various media.
The present invention is a puzzle that has certain elements common to these various other word games and yet has a distinct modus operandi such as to result in a new puzzle and a new game based on that puzzle. In the puzzle of the present invention, the word or words to be identified are in plain view, are not scrambled, and are in neither cipher nor code. The letters of the word or words are, however, xe2x80x9cconcealedxe2x80x9d by superimposing letters of the same known font on the letters of the words, thereby leaving it to the puzzle solver to pick and choose combinations of letters which will lead to the solution of the puzzle.